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Subsidiarity and Secession: Bringing the Austrian School to the 21st Century
Abstract
Skepticism about the effectiveness of international institutions is relatively high across the world (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung/YouGov 2021). Seen as a waste of money for taxpayers and as a source of high-paying jobs to an elite that contributes little to fighting authoritarianism and poverty in the world, multilateral institutions have come under attack in several countries.
Three rich veins of inquiry have been discovered in this volume as far as confronting the problem of Westphalian sovereignty that was identified in Volume I (Christensen, Brandon (2024). “Introduction” in Liberty and Security in an Anarchical World | Volume I: Westphalian Sovereignty and its National States, edited by Brandon Christensen. London: Palgrave Macmillan): libertarians and classical liberals (henceforth libertarians [See Van de Haar (2015) for important distinctions between libertarians and classical liberals]) must find a way to replace the nationalisms of the world with a cosmopolitanism that is both anti-imperial and anti-national.
This chapter reconstructs the formative decades of European integration from the perspective of three German political economists: the ordoliberals Wilhelm Röpke, Ludwig Erhard, and Alfred Müller-Armack. In their multiple roles of theorists, public intellectuals, and policymakers, the ordoliberals shaped the incipient integration process from the immediate postwar years to the mid-1960s. They outlined two potential trajectories for the European project. While both imply a common market, the “large Switzerland” trajectory stands for political decentralization and non-protectionism, while the “large France” trajectory leads to political centralization and protectionism. The ordoliberals openly preferred the former, especially its emphasis on subsidiarity and federalism. The chapter concludes by identifying a movement toward a “large France” since the mid-1980s and discusses the reformability of today’s European Union toward a “large Switzerland.”
This open access book provides an updated and fully revised 4th edition of this authoritative analysis of Swiss democracy. It particularly explains the institutions of federalism and consensus government through political power sharing. In this new edition, the authors also address several important changes and challenges that have affected Swiss democracy, including the country's relationship with the EU, fiscal equalisation, direct democracy and the legitimacy of national referendums, territorial conflict, as well as the polarisation of party politics.
Wolf Linder is Professor emeritus of the Institute of Political Science, University of Berne, Switzerland. His main areas of research are Swiss politics, direct democracy and Europeanisation.
Sean Mueller is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Political Science, University of Berne, Switzerland. His main areas of research are Swiss and comparative federalism, power-sharing and direct democracy.
The aim of this paper is to present a review of the legal, theoretical, and empirical aspects of secessions from an economic perspective. This survey provides interesting insights into recent events such as the Brexit and the threat of secession made for instance by Scotland and Catalonia. International law does not grant a general right to secede, nor does it forbid secession. Furthermore, there are several modalities of secessions, which turn out to be important for new states that want to get an international recognition. For its part, the economic theory shows that the decision for a region to remain in a country (or a union) or to secede eventually results from a trade-off between the benefits of being part of a large country, on the one hand, and the costs often associated to more heterogeneity, on the other hand. The latter are generally more important for those regions which are “far away” from the central (federal) government. Empirical literature confirms the importance of these trade-offs and shows that decentralization may be effective to accommodate secessionist conflicts only if certain conditions are fulfilled.
The present article assesses and compares the MERCOSUR Parliament, the Andean Parliament, and the Latin American Parliament as instruments to insert political representation and parliamentarians in their respective integration projects. It is argued that the development of regional parliaments in Latin America, however, has not produced substantial changes in regional decision-making processes, which remain the exclusive domain of intergovernmental or interpresidential exchanges.
A bstract
Hayek famously claimed that he would prefer a “liberal” dictator to “democratic government lacking in liberalism.” While Hayek's views of the Pinochet regime have generated much controversy, surprisingly little has been written about Hayek's defense of transitional dictatorship. Making use of previously un‐translated foreign language archival material, this paper helps shed light on Hayek's views of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, transitional dictatorship, and the Pinochet regime as well as helping to separate Hayekian ‘fact’ from Hayekian ‘fiction’.
In this article, contrary to "neo-realist" and "neo-liberal" arguments that identify identites and interest as given in the system, the author porposes an alternative system perception based on the hypotheses of "constuctivist" theory focusing on the processes. This constructivist explanation that the author defends questions the main consensus in the literature by emphasizing the proceses and provides alternative explanations. In the first part, the author presents the way main stream theories explain the system and as alternative to them he explores how social proceses create and transform identites and interests. In the second part, the author explains how inter-state relations are formed and transformed with the examples from different types of states and emphasize that this relationship system is a process. In the third part, the author discusses the dynamics that define the structure of international relations by exploring concepts like security and sovereignty. In the conclusion, the author argues that the social dynamics are important in creation of the international system and that these dynamics can transform the system into different structures and that these alternative explanations should be explored more in the literature.
The Austrian School of Economics has long been branded as a sort of radical laissez-faire wing within the economics profession, even much more “right-wing,” in fact, than Milton Friedman, the profession;'s most recognized “preacher” of the free-market. The economic journalist Alfred Malabre, Jr., for example, in his recent critical book on modern economics, Lost Prophets , argues that “the monetarism that Friedman and his followers were preaching was not quite as conservative as advertised. In fact, the University of Chicago professor was treading not far from the middle of the economic road, flanked on the left by the likes of Galbraith and Leontief and on the right by Hayek, along with such other Austrian-school luminaries as Hans Sennholz, chairman of the economics department at Grove City College in western Pennsylvania, and Ludwig von Mises, transplanted from Austria and finishing out a distinguished academic and writing career at New York University” (Malabre 1994, p. 144).
International organizations are widely believed to undermine domestic democracy. Our analysis challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that multilateral institutions can enhance the quality of national democratic processes, even in well-functioning democracies, in a number of important ways: by restricting the power of special interest factions, protecting individual rights, and improving the quality of democratic deliberation, while also increasing capacities to achieve important public purposes. The article discusses conflicts and complementarities between multilateralism and democracy, outlines a working conception of constitutional democracy, elaborates theoretically the ways in which multilateral institutions can enhance constitutional democracy, and discusses the empirical conditions under which multilateralism is most likely to have net democratic benefits, using contemporary examples to illustrate the analysis. The overall aim is to articulate a set of critical democratic standards appropriate for evaluating and helping to guide the reform of international institutions.
To justify their authority, international organizations (IOs) have long relied on a functional narrative that highlights effective problem-solving based on rational-legal expertise and neutrality. Today, IOs increasingly legitimize their authority in the language of democracy. Yet not all of them do so to the same extent, in the same manner, or consistently over time. In this article, we offer a comprehensive theoretical and empirical account of democratic legitimation in global governance. Our analysis builds on a new dataset, measuring the extent to which global IOs use democratic narratives in legitimizing their authority throughout the period from 1980 to 2011. The central findings are threefold. First, our data reveal a far-reaching rise of democratic legitimation in global governance. For many organizations, this increase remains relatively modest; for others, the democratic legitimation narrative becomes central. Second, this variation is mainly explained by a combination of two factors: (a) public visibility and protest constitute the driving forces of democratic legitimation and (b) IOs’ reaction to these legitimacy pressures unfolds in a path-dependent manner. Once organizations begin to take up democratic narratives, it seems to become costly to leave this path and shift to yet another set of norms. By contrast, the conventional wisdom that democratic legitimation follows in the footsteps of internationalized authority is not supported by our analysis.
The political and economic crisis of EU integration has made it increasingly apparent how challenging it is to bring together different sovereign cultures, languages and regions into a single political system. Switzerland - being one of the three classic federations in the world - can provide insights, particularly in relation to the accommodation of cultural, linguistic, religious and regional diversity, which can help tackle contemporary challenges. This book describes and analyses the characteristics, institutions, and processes of Swiss federalism, along with its combination of stability and change. It presents a comprehensive study of the federal system of Switzerland, where it comes from, how it operates, and the way it has changed of late. This will allow readers to appreciate the specific and current answers the Swiss case offers to the main questions raised by wider federal research. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students in federalism and territorial politics, political institutions, local and regional government studies, multi-level governance and more broadly to European and comparative politics.
The aim of the article is to present the position on the libertarian ground, especially in anarcho-capitalistic movement represented by Murray N. Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Llewellyn H. Rockwell and Thomas Woods that should be used when talking over the question of secession and freedom pursuits in the world. I will present the line of argumentation that leads libertarians to support pro-secessionist attitude, argumentation taking form of postulate of individual level secession. Next, I will show different libertarian argumentations defending this position, namely deontological, utilitarian and institutional argumentation etc. I will also try to show the consequences of secessionist processes. Next, I will try to describe a mechanism that could be applied to realize the ultimate libertarian goal, which is in this case, the secession of an individual. In the last section of the article, I will mention some doubts and questions which appear when trying to put through those ideas.
Global events have an ever-expanding influence on people's lives, which requires classical liberals to develop comprehensive views on international relations. Another consequence of the lack of a standard classical-liberal view on international affairs is that false ideas about world politics have continued to circulate for many decades, if not centuries. Conditions in Somalia and the northeast region of Congo during recent decades may serve as examples of the latter. Although some order may exist in such a situation, it is certainly not liberal order because life, liberty, and property remain under constant threat. In Hayek's view, spontaneous order and its institutions are the products of an evolutionary process of the elimination of less-effective alternatives. Therefore, spontaneous order is not based on a harmony of interests. It is instead the result of individuals' pursuing their own interests without much concern for unseen external effects, although these effects may turn out to be positive in the end.
This article reviews key recent literature on the effects of trade liberalization on poverty in developing countries and asks whether our knowledge has changed significantly over a decade. The conclusion that liberalization generally boosts income and thus reduces poverty has not changed; some authors suggest that this finding is not true for very poor countries, but this suggestion is far from proven at present. With regard to microeconomics, recent literature again confirms that liberalization has very heterogeneous effects on poor households, depending, inter alia, on what trade policies are liberalized and how the household earns its living. Working in the export sector predicts gains, and working in the import-competing sector predicts losses, a finding that is reinforced by studies of the effects of liberalization on wages. New research has suggested several ways in which intrasectoral wage inequality is increased by trade, but this research generally does not indicate that the poor actually lose. A fairly common finding is that female workers gain from trade liberalization.
This paper looks at the economic impact of secession through the lens of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. It uses an econometric analysis covering the period between 1956 and 2011—including a series of factors linked to the independence process, socio-economic and structural controls, and the level of development—in order to assess whether (a) breaking away from the former Yugoslavia delivered an ‘independence dividend’ to the newly independent countries and whether (b) independence had a more favourable impact in richer, rather than poorer territories. The results of the analysis underline that there has been no favourable economic impact of secession and that how secession was achieved is key in understanding the subsequent economic performance of the newly independent countries. In cases of secession without conflict, independence did not have a noticeable impact on ensuing economic performance. Secession achieved by conflict, by contrast, seriously dented growth prospects.
Is NATO expansion an effort to extend Western influence at Russia's expense or to support nascent democracies? The answer depends on whether you are a "realist" or "liberal" thinker. Find out where you fall on the theoretical spectrum and how ideas can become self-fulfilling realities.
Against the backdrop of the financial and economic crisis, federal and regional States are engaging in several reforms. The financial constitutional design and institutional setting in the area of fiscal and financial matters are being revised in order to better adapt to the current challenges, which result both from the supranational sphere of economic governance and the domestic one. The rationale behind these reforming processes lies in the struggle between the apparent needs to re-centralize while accommodating decentralization claims. The paper focuses on federal and highly regionalized European States by adopting a comparative domestic perspective and investigates reform processes in the area of fiscal matters and financial intergovernmental relations. It explores the most significant features that permeate the various legal orders, trying to single out the different trends in shifting powers in favor of either (re)-centralization or decentralization. To this extent the recognition of autonomy on the revenue side and the accommodation of autonomy and solidarity within the new fiscal regimes will be analyzed. Moreover, intergovernmental cooperation in fiscal and financial areas will be scrutinized trying to point out crucial characteristics from a comparative perspective. To this regard particular attention will be given to major recently established bodies and procedures in the fiscal and public finance area as well as to their role within domestic economic governance.
Reflecting American and allied ascent, Liberal IR theorists have revived earlier theorists, notably Kant and democratic peace, constructing neoclassical liberalism to challenge Realism. Republican security theory (RST) begins in antiquity and reaches a conceptual watershed in the Enlightenment, not in Kant, but in Publius = Federalist. Pessimistic, RST assumed republics were small and expansion would fatally deform, a conclusion derived from Roman history. In a pivotal advance, Publius advanced federal union, suggesting the federal-republican security hypothesis — federal union enables republican viability in competitive interstate systems. Kant does not address the logically and historically prior question of how democracies come to populate competitive state systems sufficiently to make pacific unions. The historical record of the global industrial state system suggests federal-republican security is more important than democratic peace.
A rediscovery of the long-forgotten republican version of liberal political theory has arresting implications for the theory and practice of international relations. Republican liberalism has a theory of security that is superior to realism, because it addresses not only threats of war from other states but also the threat of despotism at home. In this view, a Hobson's choice between anarchy and hierarchy is not necessary because an intermediary structure, here dubbed is also available. The American Union from 1787 until 1861 is a historical example. This Philadelphian system was not a real state since, for example, the union did not enjoy a monopoly of legitimate violence. Yet neither was it a state system, since the American states lacked sufficient autonomy. While it shared some features with the Westphalian system such as balance of power, it differed fundamentally. Its origins owed something to particular conditions of time and place, and the American Civil War ended this system. Yet close analysis indicates that it may have surprising relevance for the future of contemporary issues such as the European Union and nuclear governance.
As many have argued, libertarianism as idea and movement contains strands that often conflict, beg questions, or try our sensibilities. There are multiple libertarianisms. Two leading theorists of modern libertarianism are Friedrich Hayek and Murray Rothbard. Both pupils of Ludwig von Mises, Hayek and Rothbard provide dual libertarianisms that share a common precept but sustain that precept in inverse ways. Both Hayek and Rothbard maintain that, in societies like theirs, the desirable always concords with liberty (or maximal liberty). Rothbard achieved this concordance by molding his sensibilities about the desirable to fit his definition of liberty. Hayek achieved this concordance by molding his definition of liberty to fit his sensibilities about the desirable. These two libertarianisms represent a duality of worthy rhetorical tasks, namely, those of the “bargainer” (exemplified by Hayek) and the “challenger” (exemplified by Rothbard). But libertarians ought to reject the precept of concordance: the desirable does not always concord with liberty. I attempt a blending of Hayek and Rothbard that recognizes the several limitations of libertarianism, sustains Hayek’s sensibilities, yet maintains Rothbard’s cogent definition of liberty. The paper explores various ways in which the proposed blending makes for a reasonable and versatile “mere” libertarianism that successfully participates in mainstream discourse.
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